Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. It is clear that he truly cares about his constituents' concerns.
Last week I participated in a waterfront cleanup in a park with some people from my riding of Pierrefonds—Dollard. It was great to see the public involved in cleaning up the environment and the waterfront.
However, the bill is not just referring to garbage being thrown out by people in a specific community. Should the public be responsible for the costs associated with toxic spills? The NDP does not think so, as my colleague mentioned earlier. We want those responsible to be held accountable, and Canadians or the people living in the communities affected are not necessarily those responsible.
I would like to quote Mr. Sumaila, a professor at the University of British Columbia and member of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit, who testified in committee regarding this bill. He said:
Who pays for this? We have mechanisms to cover up to $1.35 billion, but as I gave you in the example from the ExxonMobil incident, about $6.5 billion was needed to do the cleanup.
He does not think that the measures go far enough and thinks that we should ask ourselves why the public should have to pay the difference. I would like to hear what my colleague thinks about that.